People in general are hard wired for “numero uno”- however, second in line is generally the human race, which implicitly tells us to be nice.

I’d say people are inherently good, but it’s much easier to see faults.
A person walks down the street and you don’t bat an eye- probably don’t even notice. But if they suddenly mess up and trip- the 100 other steps he took doesn’t matter. The only thing you notice is the one trip.
The same is applied with actions. A man can perform 100 small good deeds and people barely take notice. Then he does one small bad deed and suddenly all of the attention is on him and people are pointing fingers and calling him out, even if his good actions far outweigh the bad.
I think this can have a snowball effect where people start to expect other people to call out their faults, so begin to act “faulty” all the time.

Good. They come out good. Biologically predisposed sometimes. but mostly good. We learn to be evil. But not saying you're wrong. I think you're right, most people become selfish and evil.

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Inherently good, though selfish. We learn to be both better good, and also evil.

An infant is innocent, like an animal. He knows only his own need to survive, not malice nor compassion.

Our life experiences teach us to care about others, but they also teach us how to use others to our own gain.

i wonder where the instinct to act on evildoing/thoughts develops? is it because we have a complex brain? with that said so we can have a huge variety of emotions/thoughts?

for example when i was little.. and then my baby brother was born.. dont get me wrong i loved him to death but .. whenever he got more attention or a better toy..etc then my love went right out the window.

I believe that most people start off essentially amoral and their subsequent upbringing, life experiences, determine whether they become good, evil, or somewhere between the 2.

People on help are inherently good ;)

Everyone else sucks and needs our positive influence

haha, jk. I'm a b!0tch, honestly

Good and evil are psychological constructs based on the individuals viewpoint. So it’s impossible to answer this question.

We follow norms developed over centuries, but lack the whole picture and also the imagination to fill in the gaps.

A lot of acts deemed good or evil can be reversed with knowledge or rendered as something in between as the more data one has makes it much harder to determine anything in black and white.

The dualism is a faulty system as it defines everything as one or the other. If the belief system in a person is of this nature, there will be tremendous upheaval as the psyche tries to define everything while holding on to the selected ideals. This leads to deeply neurotic behavior and causes the mind to fragment and would in turn manifest as mental illness.

The natural state of humans is cooperation. There is no good or evil in that. The social construct comes in to determine what the larger group will define within their created belief system.

If you study humanity as from the perspective of an extra terrestrial, things will make more sense.

The onlook on the world is also largely a construct of the onlooker. The individual sees good or bad in the world as a projection of the dualism within himself.
(“Him” is a genderless term for mankind)

Soooo...
in short one could say it depends on you and what you believe.

When I do security assessments, I am not considering attacks from wild animals.

No, I am planning protections from humam predators.

Kind of funny, isn't it?

Adult ones though, not innocent children!

I agree with little kids being selfish and non empathetic.

You could take it a step further and realize that even teens and early 20's do not have fully developed reasoning abilities in their brains, and so that leads to pretty selfish behavior from time to time.

...But also amazingly sweet and insightful :)

If a child were raised to adulthood in a morally neutral environment - a hypothetical but impossible environment in which all the child's physical and psychosocial needs were met, but the child never faced a moral question - would the child grow up to be evil, good, or neither?

It seems to me that good and evil are both learned behaviors, but young children usually would rather learn good, at least in my experience.

Actually, "good" is undefined. Morality and ethics are learned. You can have a good dog, but you can't have a moral dog or an immoral dog. Similar with untrained humans - they can be called good, but not moral.

Go to a playground and watch little kids being bullied by other kids. This is an innate kind of behavior. No one has to teach it to them. It's programmed into their little reptilian brains. Some people never learn to control the thoughts that emanate from the reptilian brain!

Biblically - ALL people are sinners.. and we need to be saved from ourselves. (Being a sinner is not the same as being evil though.)

There are kids who, regardless how they were raised, are evil - usually pathological psychopaths/sociopaths.

Then there are those, who are evil as they grow up in unhealthy or toxic families, and don't cope well with it - usually become narcissistic.

Also possible to become evil later in life if you deal with too much evil and don't deal with it in a right way, you can become evil.

People can get too traumatized, either in childhood or later in life, and that messes them up big time, so although they are not evil, they behave like evil.. (my story)

Again, Bible says that nobody is beyond a point of being saved.. Me, having dealt with dozens of psychopaths and narcissists, am a bit skeptical about this. Psychologically, psychopaths and narcissists do NOT change! Never heard of one being saved so far..

I've done more than go look at children on a playground. I've worked in child care for years, mostly with preschool age children. My experience has been that young children are unable to conceive of another person's point of view. They aren't acting with malice, they just don't know better. It has also been my experience that most (maybe all) children want to be "good" and are eager to learn acceptable behaviors.

Maybe you've been around children who have had fewer positive and more negative life experiences.

Good. The way they are raised determines if they remain good or turn evil.

Exactly! My bf has 8 siblings and they are all different. My exbf had 4 brothers, they were all different.. Me and my brother are like from two different planets..

The upbringing is never the same. I have five siblings and we're all different. Some of that is probably innate - none of us are identical twins - but each of us grew up in a slightly different environment, even though we were all in one household with one set of parents.

For example, older siblings are likely to be called upon to care for younger ones. Younger ones will have more/different role models. The family situation changes over time, with finances, illness, parental occupation and hobbies, and the activities of other siblings and household members. And that's not even considering the diversity of situations outside of the home.

We are all born in sin and have a God given right to choose between good and evil. I believe the vast majority of us want to be treated well and good ourselves. Therefore we learn to treat others how we wish to be treated. It is human nature to be pleasing to our friends and neighbors.
If you feel wronged by someone you can choose not to associate with them. Or, oddly, you can love them regardless but let them know this little thing they said or did upset you. But you choose not to let that act or words they said to you, define who inherently you believe they are on the inside. Perhaps you may of said something hurtful to them so now they are releasing that pain and anger back. You won't know until you can sit down and talk to them.

I raised 5 kids and 4 of them were inherently good but one was just always bad. When he was 3 years old he got kicked out of Sunday School because he kept stealing things and attacking the other children. They said not to bring him back, to SUNDAY SCHOOL at our church...

Nothing we could do changed him. Put him on ritalin for a while and he was still crazy. Moved him in with grandma and grandpa because they said we didn't know how to handle him and he was back in 6 months, they said he was impossible. He's 33 and on probation in 2 counties and will never change, I am convinced of it. The other 4 are perfect angels.

I think people are born who they are and some are good and some are bad. Sure you can mess a person up and make them terrible and bad and evil but I have not seen many who were terrible and became good. I have this really strong conscience and if I try to lie I turn red and look at the ground, I can't steal, I've never been in a fight in my life... I'm just no good at being bad. Some people are.

Were those 4 perfect angels even yours, Doc? ;)

Oh my....! I hope he takes this in the humorous way it was intended.

If not, my follow up question DocteurRalph is how many days, hours, minutes does this pour soul have to live?

I raised two step children and three of my own. The crazy one is not mine, surprisingly.

How many days does he have to live? I'm not sure anyone knows the answer to that question. I did meet him at a bus stop yesterday to give him a check. He got kicked out of the half way house he was living at for smoking dope and needed more money... at least that was the story I got. His own mother won't answer the phone when he calls and told me I was an idiot when I left to go meet him. Just another day in paradise!

Good and evil are relative moral concepts whose meanings change as social situations and cultures change. People may be inherently good or evil depending on what system of values one decides to take as the litmus test.

From the Komodo Dragon point of view, most human people are indeed inherently evil, as they do not vomit or defecate before competing with males for female courtship, though there are exceptions to this rule.

You should have gone bar hopping with me in the 80's Lano. It was not uncommon at all to vomit before, during, or after competing with males for female courtship.

The trick was, of course, to not vomit on the woman you were trying to impress!

.. just onto the other guy that was trying to impress her.